Camellia Yang's Blog

The Consciousness Behind Creation

Sora2 was definitely the hot topic this week. It seemed like everyone was talking about OpenAI’s latest AI video generation tool, and of course, I jumped in with both feet.

But something unexpected happened after I’d created more than 100 videos. The initial excitement began to fade, and in its place emerged a series of questions that kept me awake at night

Why did I have certain thoughts about making certain videos?

Where did my prompts actually come from?

Why did the results, based on my prompt...

The Undelivered Manuscript

The letter arrived at my office on a Tuesday morning in October, water-stained and bearing a postmark from 1687. The postal service, with their characteristic bureaucratic precision, had attached a yellow note: "Delayed due to structural damage at sorting facility. We apologise for any inconvenience."

Three hundred and thirty-five years late.

I am Dr Cecelia Chen, a historian specialising in 17th-century correspondence. I can tell you that letters from Newton's era surface occasionally, usually fr...

My Expensive Therapy Called Portugal

I spent thirty years running from an invisible tiger that turned out to be my own ambition.

You know those Asian parent stereotypes? They're not stereotypes when you live them. I grew up in Shandong Province, China, where 99% wasn’t good enough, where “rest” was a nonexistent word and “average” was a death sentence. In a culture where parents ask why you didn’t get first place instead of second, the pressure isn’t subtle but baked into dinner conversations, family gatherings, and every report car...

Chasing Shadows: How Hong Kong Detective Films Rewrote the British Playbook

When you think of British detective films, maybe you picture foggy London alleys, gentlemen in tweed, and sharp-eyed sleuths decoding society’s deepest secrets.

Now shift that image 6,000 miles east. Neon lights cut through humid rain. The streets are alive, chaotic, restless. Shadows twist between high-rises where old colonial buildings still cling to the hillsides. This is Hong Kong, a city that absorbed the British detective tradition and then completely rewired it.

In 2025, The Shadow’s Edge (...

She Wants to Die, But She Stops for Flowers

She wrote all day.
It felt like being dragged into a tunnel with no end.
Fingers stiff. Eyes dry and burning.
But she couldn’t stop.
The voices in her head wouldn’t let her.
Write. Delete. Write again.
Her heart pounded too fast.
She feared slowing down.
Feared stopping.
Feared the silence when the words were gone.

In the afternoon, she trained.
Her body pinned under the barbell, breath tearing through her lungs.
Arms shook, sweat hit the floor, one drop, then another.
Still, she didn’t stop.
Energy burst und...

Book Launch | Dream State Zero

I didn’t set out to write THIS book.

What I started with were fragments: dream images I couldn’t shake off, thoughts that arrived mid-conversation, moments that felt slightly... off.

I began recording them to understand why certain scenes, real or imagined, refused to let me go.

Some stories came out clean, like they’d been waiting.

Others were messy, recursive, and full of hesitation.

I wrote them anyway.

Over time, a pattern began to form: consciousness bending, memory looping, strange voices h...

Nostalgia

A soul has departed, yet memories linger on.

Back in my childhood, I was drawn to the music of Danny Chan and Beyond without fully understanding why. There was something in those voices that cut through the quiet predictability of my daily life: a rawness, an honesty about heartbreak and dreams that felt more real than anything around me. I practically wore out my favourite DVD, Beyond 1991 Live concert, playing it until the disc would skip at familiar moments. The melodies and lyrics spoke to m...

Dream State Zero: Stories Echoes from the Mind’s Blind Spot

I didn’t set out to write THIS book. What I started with were fragments: dream images I couldn’t shake off, thoughts that arrived mid-conversation, moments that felt slightly... off. I began recording them to understand why certain scenes, real or imagined, refused to let me go.

Some stories came out clean, like they’d been waiting. Others were messy, recursive, full of hesitation. I wrote them anyway. Over time, a pattern began to form: consciousness bending, memory looping, strange voices hummi...

The Frozen Phoenix

Marco Castellano stood on the top step of the Silverstone podium, champagne dripping from his dark hair as he raised the Formula 2 trophy toward the roaring crowd. Seventeen years old, series champion, and already the paddock was whispering his name like a prayer. The Ferrari Trento still fizzed in the bottle at his feet, having been sprayed with the exuberant joy that had become his trademark. The Italian media had dubbed him "Il Fulmine", The Lightning, for the way he carved through the field ...

For you, the Grail

The acoustics laboratory at Cambridge University sat within a Victorian brick building, afternoon sunlight streaming through tall windows onto precision instruments. Dr Gemma Clayton was deeply absorbed in analysing data from a 14th-century Gothic cathedral, her eyes fixed on complex waveform patterns across her computer screen. As Europe's leading authority on medieval architectural acoustics, the 33-year-old had an almost obsessive sensitivity to every frequency variation.

Gemma had possessed a...